Recordings.

Arsonists As The World Burns (Matador) This...

October 10, 1999|By Soren Baker.

Arsonists

As The World Burns (Matador)

This veteran hip-hop quintet delivers a hard-to-digest musical and lyrical package on its debut full-length. Though this style is openly embraced in underground hip-hop circles, the New York group's scattered beats and sometimes abstract lyrics require patience and concentration to comprehend. Likewise, some of the instrumentation backing the Arsonists lacks continuity and appears to be different simply for the sake of being different. Even though each member possesses above-average rhyme skills and the group's self-produced beats have merit, the set comes off as being too awkward to fully enjoy.